The Unassuming Economist

Dani Rodrik writes:

“Financial globalization appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. In a remarkable series of papers, researchers at the IMF have documented these negative inequality impacts (Jaumotte et al. 2013; Furceri and Loungani 2015). Most noteworthy is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalization, most of them taking place during the last couple of decades. Liberalization episodes are identified by big changes in a standard measure of financial openness (the Chinn-Ito index) and large subsequent capital flows. They find that capital-account liberalization leads to statistically significant and long-lasting declines in the labor share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1, 5, and 10 percent of income (see Figure 4 for their key results). Furthermore, these adverse effects on inequality are stronger in cases where de jure liberalization was accompanied by large increase in capital flows. Financial globalization appears to have complemented trade in exerting downwards pressure on the labor share of income.

Why would financial globalization increase inequality and the capital share in particular? There is no analogue to trade theory’s Stolper-Samuelson theorem in international macroeconomics. So to some extent these distributional consequences of financial globalization are a genuine surprise. But there may be an obvious, bargaining-related explanation (as argued in Rodrik 1997, chap. 2). As long as wages are determined in part by bargaining between employees and employers, the outside options of each party play an important role. Capital mobility gives employers a credible threat: accept lower wages, or else we move abroad. Indeed, Furceri et al. (2017) provide some evidence that the decline in the labor share is related to the threat of relocating production abroad. As a proxy for the potential threat they use layoff propensities of different industries. They find the effect of capital account liberalization on labor shares is particularly strong in those sectors with a higher natural layoff rate. The bargaining explanation is also consistent with the finding in Jaumotte et al. (2013) that it is foreign direct investment in particular that is associated with the rise in inequality.”

Continue reading here.

From a new post by Robert Shiller:

“My own theory about today’s stagnation focuses on growing angst about rapid advances in technologies that could eventually replace many or most of our jobs, possibly fueling massive economic inequality. People might be increasingly reluctant to spend today because they have vague fears about their long-term employability – fears that may not be uppermost in their minds when they answer consumer-confidence surveys. If that is the case, they might increasingly need stimulus in the form of low interest rates to keep them spending. ”

Continue reading here.

From a new Macro Musings Blog by David Beckworth:

“It took the United States roughly 150 years to become an optimal currency area (OCA), according to economic historian Hugh Rockoff. This long journey meant that it was not until the late 1930s that a one-size-fits-all monetary policy made sense for the U.S. economy. Since then the U.S. economy has often been held up as the best example of a currency union that meets the OCA criteria. This especially was the case when comparisons have been made to the Eurozone, like in this classic Blanchard and Katz (1992) paper.  But all is not well in this land of the OCA.

(…)

The policy implications seem clear. Policy makers at the local, state, and federal level need to push policies that increase labor market mobility. There is a lot of work to do on this front, but it is important to do so to keep the United States an OCA. The Schleichner paper provides some suggestions and is good starting point for discussion.”

Continue reading here.

A new IMF annual assessment of the Colombian economy says that “The peace agreement will cement security gains achieved over the last decade and continue to bring more investment to the country. The implementation of the peace agreement will also focus on the regions where income per capita is relatively lower. The delivery of basic public goods and services to remote, poor, and conflict-ridden regions of the country—in addition to Colombia’s improved security conditions—will certainly make growth more inclusive over time.”

Continue reading here.